November 12th, 2010

Thanks to Sinead for last week’s blog. She’s absolutely right about “… the strange parallel universe that exists in the world of magazine deadlines”. Some writers just can’t get their head around the fact that you need to be writing and submitting your Christmas material to magazines in June and that if you’re considering any anniversary in May 2011 you should be writing it now. Having said that, look at this month’s E-zee Writer for some ideas on things to write about. Read the rest of this entry »

October 8th, 2010

As you know, every month I ask one of our Writers Bureau tutors to provide a guest blog, to provide a bit of variety and a different viewpoint. Next week it will be the turn of poet and competition adjudicator, Alison Chisholm, and she’ll be explaining why it’s so important to polish your poetry if you want it to stand the test of time.

September 10th, 2010

First, thanks to Janie Jackson for standing in last week. Whenever you read anything that Janie has written, the fact that she firmly believes in ‘positive thought’ comes through loud and clear.

I also agree entirely with her views that you’ve got to move with the times. Only last week the papers were full of headlines like ‘OED Falls Victim to the Digital Divide’, bemoaning the fact that the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (21 years in the making, apparently!) will only be available online. But printing a 20-volume dictionary is expensive; so an online version makes commercial sense. And how many of us can really afford the space (or money) to have a set on our bookshelves! So let’s not lament the loss – instead be glad of the extra accessibility that often results from moving with the times.